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Oral historians researching different Kenyan communities retell stories of seers such as Mugo wa Kibiru, Syokimau, Mbatian, Kimnyole arap Turukat, Orkoiyot Mugeni, Mepoho, and various Luo Jobilo who foretold the coming of the white man and the establishment of a colonial administration. The seers warned the diverse Kenyan communities about the superior war technology possessed by the white man and advised against direct martial confrontation. Instead, they advised that select Kenyan local youth be identified to embed themselves within white society, study their culture and ways, their language and systems, and later use this knowledge to topple white hegemony and restore Kenyan freedom, dignity, and sovereignty.
The seers’ prophesies came to pass in all aspects except the latter part, where the chosen vanguards, the elites picked to act as Trojan horses behind the walls of white empire – the would-be liberators – have failed their people. They have turned away from their prophetic calling and become an obstacle, a hindrance to achieving the benefits of independence. The elite have instead entrenched themselves in the oppressor’s shoes and thrive on the perpetuation of a system that maintains inequality.
In The Black Hermit, Ngugi wa Thiong’o explores the community’s messianic expectation of the Kenyan elite. Remi, the main character in Ngugi’s drama, is the typical embodiment of the Kenyan elite; first-generation university-educated, an urban dweller, alienated from his birthplace and traditions, in many cases does not speak the language of his or her community, and is an adherent of a non-indigenous faith and belief system. Like many of the elite, Remi finds himself at a crossroads where his individual sense of obligation to self intersects with the expectation of the community. To his credit, he actually considers that he owes the community something in return. Remi is, like Ochol in Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, totally alienated from his people. Lawino laments that Ochol has totally abandoned the ways of his people after being emasculated by books – a euphemism for high education.
Thousands of Remis in Kenya currently occupy, or have connections to, positions of power and influence in politics, business, education, religion, and in social systems. These Kenyan elites are defined by their occupation of the higher rungs on the social, economic, political, academic, and religious ladders in Kenyan society, positions they have attained through access to money, power, and privilege, a higher education, international exposure, and access to modern technology. Although they might not even seek political power themselves, they command political influence and rule by proxy because they provide financing for politicians. However, they are also defined by their aloofness and abstraction of issues that bedevil their communities. So, how did the prophesied strategic response to colonialism that was premised on assembling the youthful crème de la crème of the communities and sending them to school to secure an education and maybe even a new faith so that they could later return to lead the masses to liberation go so wrong?
Education for alienation, not self-reliance
In Education for Self-Reliance, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere is categorical that colonial education is unsuitable for a post-independent populace because the curriculum and educational infrastructure are designed to create a cadre of entitled individuals obsessed with individual achievements rather than communal cooperation. The well-educated recipients of colonial education are more attuned to profit-making careers and are least committed to service provision. They create hierarchies, promote inequality, and their obsession with book knowledge leads to elitism and to despising non-academic careers and those with traditional indigenous knowledge systems. Nyerere describes what he considers the variance between the colonial education and what is ideal if Africa is to liberate itself from neocolonialism. He states,
“This is what our educational system has to encourage. It has to foster the social goals of living together and working together, for the common good. It has to prepare our young people to play a dynamic and constructive part in the development of a society in which all members share fairly in the good or bad fortune of the group, and in which progress is measured in terms of human well-being, not prestige buildings, cars or other such things, whether privately or publicly owned. Our education must therefore inculcate a sense of commitment to the total community, and help the pupils to accept values appropriate to our kind of future, not those appropriate to our colonial past.”
The one thing that is typical of the elites in Kenya is their penchant for devising private solutions to public problems. Private Solutions: A Tale of Political Awakening in Africa and Coming of Age in Africa, a critique of the Kenyan middle class written in 1999 by SW Omamo, paints a picture of the Kenyan elites who, when faced with the falling standards of education as a result of state defunding of schools, invest in and take their children to private schools and academies. When faced with local councils unable to collect garbage, they opt for private garbage collection firms to clear their rubbish. When the same local councils fail to ensure a reliable water supply, the elite sink boreholes and invest in water harvesting technologies, and when electricity becomes irregular and unreliable, they install generators and solar systems. When security deteriorates, they move to gated communities with high walls, razor-wire electric fences, and hire private security companies. They also purchase firearms and vicious guard dogs.
The elite tackle the problems of the broken-down system by finding private solutions that insulate them from the rest of the community; they do not try to engage with or seek a response from the state or institutions mandated to provide these services. The elite push the “politics is a dirty game” narrative and sponsor those they consider rough around the edges to get involved in politics. The elite spend a lot of time complaining and engaging on social media, while some self-styled political analysts hop from one radio or TV station to another offering “analyses”.
Jamaican-born British poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson, wrote a poem in 1980 titled Di Black Petty Booshwah (Black Petty Bourgeoisie) in which he scathingly attacks the middle-class elite. This poem could have been written about the Kenyan elites. LKJ blasts the black petty bourgeoisie for being very quick to offer their talent to the state – the ruling class – and meanwhile engaging in activities that undermine or underrate the working class. LKJ describes the elite class as siding with the oppressive system to benefit from it and proceeds to lean in to support the forces of oppression when it suits them. In every corrupt deal in which the state and the people lose money, there is a professional – a lawyer, engineer, quantity surveyor, accountant, auditor, computer scientist – all part of the elite. In the poem, the elite are painted as being extremely individualistic, lacking concern for the common good of society, and willing to exploit their positions of privilege for personal benefit. LKJ identifies the ineffectiveness of the middle class as being derived from their education. Literally paraphrasing Nyerere, he sings, “True dem say dem edicate dem a gwaan irate/ True dem say dem edicate dem a seek top rate/ Dem a seek posishun/ Aaf di back of blacks/ Seek promoshun/ Aaf de back of blacks.
The chosen few
The expression “I went to Alliance” has been the subject of jokes, caricatures, and memes over the recent past. Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichungwa was mocked for speaking about having gone to Alliance. At the burial of his father, Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir quipped, “You may not know that Dad’s children went to Alliance…, but Ichungwa went to Alliance, and everybody knows.” It has even been suggested that Ichungwa’s behaviour is inconsistent with being an Alliance alumnus. During an interview for a position in the judiciary, the late Justice Majanja stated, “In 1990, I was in Form Four at the Alliance High School”; his mentioning his alma mater became the subject of online jokes. A joke is made that a few years go Luo professionals mirthfully taunted those among them who were not Maseno School alumni by asking them, “You never went to Maseno School? What happened? Did your father die?” They would also ask, “Was your wife in Ng’iya when my wife was there?” These comments about the schools attended are not as innocuous or as innocent as they seem; they are an expression of elitism, of “otherness”. The statement is meant to identify and typify the claimant as belonging to a special cadre. Alliance has been in the spotlight since the school is reputed to have produced the elite of Kenyan post-colonial society, and hence renders those who went through Alliance a special breed – an elite. Indeed, at independence, 9 out of 15 members of Kenya’s independence cabinet were Alliance High School alumni. It is necessary to make a distinction between elitism and being part of the elite. The mention of elite schools in Kenya is an affirmation of the perpetuation of colonial educational apartheid. Colonial Kenya had a racially segregated education system, with schools for the Europeans, for Indians, and for Africans.
The objectives of the colonial system in Kenya were primarily to serve British interests by training a subordinate African labour force for settlers and the colonial administration rather than promoting intellectual development. The system aimed to inculcate European cultural values, ethics, morals, and faith, ensure submissiveness, and promote agricultural and technical skills. When the missionaries set up schools such as Alliance, Mang’u, Maseno, etc., they were responding to the need to create a comprador class above the “regular” natives – and they succeeded. In her autobiography, Days of My Life, Grace Ogot, who rose to serve in President Daniel arap Moi’s cabinet, explains in a rather tragicomic manner the transformative contribution of the missionary schools,
“At a Conference of Protestant Missions held in Nairobi in 1909, it was resolved that a school for girls should be established in Maseno. A pioneer Luo student at Maseno School, Yona Orao, also made a passionate appeal to the missionaries for such a school, saying that there was not a single girl in the region he could marry. Hence, the main motive for starting a girls’ school in the region was to provide educated African men, their ‘mission boys’, with literate wives.”
The colonial education system entrenched the layered demographic racist design, while at the level of the African Kenyan, it created another layer composed of a small minority of the “schooled” versus the unschooled – those who went to ordinary schools. Currently, in Kenya, there is a sick joke that differentiates those Kenyans who attend “Group of Schools and Academies” from those who attend regular schools. As it was in the colonial and post-colonial period, so it is now; the notion that gaining acceptance or admission into the highly competitive schools sets one apart, such selection being designed to create expectation and entitlement in those who “make it”. Nyerere notes that emphasis on passing examinations and acquiring qualifications alienated the recipients and pushed them farther and farther away from the rest of their compatriots. High salaries, perks, and privileges, and high social status were conferred upon those who acquired the qualifications, and this stood them out from the majority. The competitiveness of the qualification process emphasized individuality and celebration of personal achievement, which is counterintuitive to communalism. To make it worse, the formal colonial Western education denigrated traditional knowledge systems and epistemologies and marginalized the elders in society who were the repositories of such knowledge.
Entrenching privilege and power
By design, the transition of administrative power from the colonial administration to the newly independent African rulers was meant to protect the interests of the British crown, and, therefore, it was to those Africans who had been prepared through the education process that power was handed over. These were a safe pair of hands which had no inclination to change the status quo they had become part of. This transition also marked the beginning of the merging of the intellectual, political and economic elites. Political power enabled access to business and other extra-legal means of amassing wealth. The most glaring admission of the manipulation of political position to amass wealth was demonstrated publicly in the infamous spat between Jomo Kenyatta and his former colleague, Bildad Kaggia. Jomo travelled to Kandara, Murang’a, in 1966 to campaign against Kaggia and proceeded to berate him for not having amassed wealth like Paul Ngei, Fred Kubai, and Kung’u Karumba, with whom they had been in detention. Kenyatta said,
“Kaggia, you are advocating for free things, but we were together with Paul Ngei in jail. If you go to Ngei’s home, he has planted a lot of coffee and other crops. What have you done for yourself? If you go to Kubai’s home, he has a big house and a nice shamba – Kagia, what have you done for yourself? We were together with Kung’u Karumba in jail, and he is running his own buses. Kaggia, what have you done for yourself…?”
In this harangue, Jomo Kenyatta reveals what drives the political-cum-economic elite; that they are avowed capitalists, that they are more interested in material acquisition at the personal level and not overly bothered with communal growth, that what they consider important are large tracts of land, plantations, huge buildings, and running enterprises such as bus companies. It is no wonder that post-independence provided the emerging elite middle class with opportunities to diversify into businesses and grow wealth. So, soon after the declaration that the three enemies of the newly independent state were ignorance, poverty, and disease, the middle-class elites developed consumption habits that further distanced them from the Kenyan majority languishing in poverty.
The systemization of elitism
Once the political-economic elite captured the state upon the exit of the colonial administration, a scheme to ring-fence the gains and ensure perpetuity was set in motion. The independence movement was premised on self-government and restitution of “stolen” land and other community property. The question of whether the Lancaster constitution allowed for self-government had been contentious even as the talks were held in London. The matter was simplified to a difference between the centralists and the federalists, but the real difference was deeper; it was based on the philosophy underpinning governance. The team negotiating Kenya’s independence in London was literally hand-picked from the same pool of individuals wrung through the colonial education, religious, and administrative spin-dry system; they were already very alienated from the masses, and the political formulations they were schooled in did not take into account any indigenous governance or leadership approaches.
This is how the nation ended up with the contentious British-inspired Westminster model, incapable of manifesting the collective ethos of the various and diverse nationalities that make up Kenya. In fact, little attempt was made to try and achieve this because the political elite sitting around that table had been de-schooled of the nature and character of the people they purported to represent. The result was an alien state right from the word go. Concepts such as the separation of powers were borrowed lock, stock, and barrel without indigenization or interpretation.
Serikali, the elitist idea of the state, was and is still a very alien concept as evidenced by the fact that, to a large extent, Kenyans perceive state and government to be an imposition, something that they call upon when they need something that is beyond their own to capacity. The cry “Tunaomba serikali” or “Serikali iingilie kati” is telling. The elitist state and government are an external force that is expected to swoop in and offer rescue. This is also the reason why anything that “belongs to the government” is considered to belong to no one and can be plundered and destroyed with no sense of loss.
Government functionaries perpetuate this colonial perception of the state through their demeanour, behaviour, and the manner in which they communicate to the public. The trappings of state power – right from the uniform of the chief and regional administrators – clearly demarcate the elite state and the public. In public meetings, or even during the chief’s baraza, it is easy to spot the government functionaries by their attire and their mode of transport. The optics of otherness is carried right through into institutions such as the judiciary and people’s assemblies. The robes worn by the judges and advocates, and the speakers of national and county assemblies, are a carry-over from the colonial era. During his tenure as Chief Justice, Willy Mutunga had this to say:
“The philosophical and cultural orientation of the Judiciary has reflected its founding history of dominance, power, prestige, and remoteness, as opposed to service and equality. Further, its architecture, rules, dress code, and other rituals have [it] from social reality. As a result, the public perceive the Judiciary to be alien and insensitive.”
The reform in the judiciary was a start at decolonizing the institution, but still only scratched the surface. The deep-seated colonial mentality was evident during the debates and drafting of the Kenya Constitution 2010. During the initial public discussions at the Bomas of Kenya, there were proposals to acknowledge and incorporate the reality of Kenya’s indigenous governance systems, but those suggestions were brushed aside mainly because the constitutional discussions were themselves a very middle-class, elitist discourse.
The Kenya Constitution 2010 has been hailed as very progressive, mainly because it addresses issues that the elite considered important; issues such as ideation of the beginning of life, abortion, sexual orientation, access to citizenship by male spouses of Kenyan women, the right to marital property, etc. Nothing revealed the class cleavages in Kenya more than the constitution-making process. Feeling cornered by middle-class demands for a people-centred and people-driven constitution-making process, President Moi infamously questioned what Wanjiku knew about the constitution, and in an instant introduced a new concept in the political and social lexicon.
Wanjiku describes and defines the Kenyans on the lowest rung of society. Himself a member of the political elite, Moi was expressing his disdain for the Kenyans routinely referred to as “wananchi wa kawaida” – the average citizen. Moi was expressing the middle-class haughtiness that believed that the constitution-making process was too complex an exercise that should be the preserve of experts and politicians to the exclusion of ordinary Kenyans. The political elite in Kenya reserve for themselves titles such as mheshimiwa – the respected, the honourable one – even when they are aware that they are not perceived as such. Indeed, Kenyan MPs have found themselves labelled as MPigs because of their self-serving nature and their appetite for self-benefit.
Elites are not purely products of the colonial and post-colonial system in Kenya, but elitism is. Traditional society had its own elites; there were traditional scholars, clinicians, priests, craftsmen, and women who towered above the rank and file of the community, and they were well respected and recognized and even celebrated by their compatriots, but they were not necessarily elitist. They enjoyed a hallowed status but only in their specific spheres of expertise, and these positions were not used to intimidate or take advantage of others. Their positions did not accord them entitlement. The sense of entitlement, as Mwalimu Nyerere’s analysis above explains, is a product of colonial education that alienated this class from the rest of the population.
